The longest unrepeatered links utilize a remotely-pumped Er post-amplifier (Tx ROPA), located ˜30-70 km from the transmit terminal, in addition to a remote pre-amplifier (Rx ROPA), typically positioned ˜100-140 km from the receive terminal. Pumping of the ROPAs can be accomplished either by directly launching high power at ˜1480 nm (first-order pumping) or through the generation of 1480-nm pump power inside the transmission fiber (or dedicated pump-delivery fibers) via high-order cascaded Raman processes as described in the following articles: F. Boubal, J-P. Blondel, E. Brandon, L. Buet, V. Havard, L. Labrunie, P. Le Roux, “Recent unrepeatered WDM 10 Gbit/s experiments in the range 300 km to 450 km,” Suboptic 2001, Kyoto, Paper P3.6., S. Papernyi, V. Karpov, W. Clements, “Third-Order Cascaded Raman Amplification,” OFC2002, Anaheim, postdeadline paper FB4., L. Labrunie, F. Boubal, P. Le Roux, E. Brandon, “500 km WDM 12×10 Gbit/s CRZ repeaterless transmission using second order remote amplification,” Electronic Letters, Vol 39, No 19, pp 1394-1395, 2003., V. Karpov, S. Papernyi, V. Ivanov, W. Clements, T. Araki, Y. Koyano, “Cascaded pump delivery for remotely pumped Erbium doped amplifiers,” Suboptic 2004, Paper We.8.8. A Rx ROPA can be pumped through the transmission fiber and/or dedicated delivery fibers. On the other hand, in the case of Tx ROPAs, the transmission fiber cannot be used for pump delivery since Raman interactions between the high pump power and the co-propagating signals would cause excess noise generation and limit the pump power delivered to the ROPA. As a result, all systems with a Tx ROPA have to date utilized one or two pump sources with each connected to a dedicated pump-delivery fiber. Although utilizing two dedicated fibers and Tx ROPA pump sources allows optical budget increases of ˜9-12 dB, the improvement comes at the expense of a substantial increase in system cost and complexity as mentioned in the above-cited articles by, Labrunie et al, and Karpov et al.